An actual 6 year-old asked me the question today. I was at a loss.
**Edit**: a lot of interesting answers, food for thought, and ideas on how to explain it to a child. Many thanks to the community!
If I summarize:
* Dinosaurs lived for a very (very) long time, all over the earth, and there were countless different species of them.
* There were few of our ancestors, from just a few species, and most of their existence was confined to limited geographical areas.
* The conditions for a fossil to form are extremely rare, and they may have been even rarer for our ancestors than they were for dinosaurs.
In: 819
Not only is fossilisation extremely rare, I think primate fossils (including humans) are notoriously difficult to fossilise. I forget why exactly but I think in part is due to the types of environments they lived in. The first chimpanzee fossil was only found in 2005 and it was just a couple of teeth.
Latest Answers